Best Bets This Week in Live Bay Area Music

MGMT is playing "Kids" again. I repeat, MGMT is playing "Kids" again. Rally.

We bring you this week’s edition of the Best Concert Bets from annoyingly sunny Los Angeles, site of this past weekend’s FYF Music Festival. We witnessed a few of this week’s acts with our own eyes, and we can report they’re all still rockin hard in the festival world. Put together your own Faux Yeah Festival in SF this week with these shows.

Bradford Cox’s art project-gone-mainstream is a fascinating exercise in pop experimentation. Deerhunter’s FYF fest set reminded us that getting weird and appealing to the masses aren’t mutually exclusive. The band’s latest album Monomania pushes the limits of what’s possible in the context of a song, no hyperbole. If you have an appetite for jarring twists and turns, Deerhunter is for you.

This just in: The ‘90s are alive in more places than just Portland! The Breeders are bringing back a very specific point in that not-forgotten decade to a national audience, playing the 1993 epic Last Splash front to back on its current tour. If you’re like me, “Cannonball” was a part of your too-cool-for-school days, regardless of how uncool we really were.

Guys. MGMT is back. You may recall their last album Congratulations was … whatever. It doesn’t matter. They’re back with a new album, which they’re touring now. And it’s a revelation of exclamation points. It’s all the experimental wonder of Congratulations with all the power-pop ecstasy of their self-titled debut. Only a slight amount of disbelief suspension is required this time around. Also: they're playing "Kids" again.

It’s not Alt-J’s fault the buzz around their delicious debut album An Awesome Wave keeps growing in popularity. It wasn’t even a year ago the English pop band played Bottom of the Hill, and now they’re at the Fox Theatre. Two nights in a row. It’s an unreal, unbelievably fast rise to relevance–an awesome wave indeed.